With the increasing popularity of social networking, traditional forms of joining, sharing interests and hobbies, and making appointments, e.g., by joining social clubs, attending social events, meeting friends through other friends, and so forth, are replaced by social activities via the Internet, in particular by some sort of social forum for networking and meeting new people. It can even be said that for many people, the Internet nowadays represents the principal way in which the people meet new friends and remain in touch with existing friends, because the Internet enables establishing and maintaining interactions between vast numbers of individuals.
For this purpose various social networking websites have been developed in recent years. Social networking websites can provide organizational tools and forums for allowing these individuals to interact with one another via the social networking website. Many users prefer to limit communications to specific groups of other users or friends sharing the same or similar interests and activities.
The classic way of displaying activities in a time-related fashion is by using a calendar showing either days, weeks, or months as boxes. Events are visible, but no additional value is added, especially not in relation to its importance or to other activities. While this classic way is well suited for an office environment, user interaction in social networks and forums requires new tools and functionality.
US 2010/0088322 A1 discloses a method for identifying so-called hot topics. For this purpose a news stream is analyzed for keywords and the frequency of citation of the keywords is determined. The method also utilizes a graphical representation for visualizing this frequency of citation of the keywords. If the frequency exceeds a predetermined threshold value, a keyword becomes a hot topic that is, e.g., displayed in an online community and thus communicated to a plurality of users potentially interested in this topic.
US 2009/0171869 A1 discloses a related method, which tries to predict hot terms in the future. For this purpose a categorization model is used.
US 2007/0016609 A1 relates to a method for analyzing news streams utilizing tools that can analyze content to determine its traits, classify the content based on its traits, and present the content in a user interface tailored to the classification. The tools can also organize content items into groups based on a common trait and enable a user to select content items through their group. Responsive to the user's selection of a group, the tools can present content, render enclosures, and alter traits of the content items in the group. The content is not tagged with time-information.
US 2009/0319914 A1 discloses a method for determining a relationship between participants in an online community based on various facts. The nature of the relationship is represented in a user interface (UI) by a visual element that shows the extent or depth of the relationship. Facets of the relationship may be used to facilitate interaction between participants (e.g., if two participants both like a particular band, then information relevant to the band may be shown as part of the UI when the participants interact with each other). The nature of the relationship may be determined or characterized based on commonality of activities, commonality of interests, the extent to which the participants have interacted with each other in the past, or other facts.
US 2005/0198031 A1 discloses a method and system for controlling access to content in a social networking environment. A first user can define relationships with a plurality of second users by assigning one or more relationship designators for each relationship. The first user stores content within the social networking environment and denotes individuals allowed to or prevented from accessing the content by entering one or more relationship designators. The first user may further control access by using tier designators. The social networking environment may generate a proximity index based on the relationships between a first user and a particular second user. The first user may control access to content based on the proximity index. The first user may also allow or prevent the reception of content from other users having particular relationship designators, tier designators, and/or proximity indices with respect to the first user. Alternatively, in this system environment, the content of a personal calendar of an individual user of the social network can be shared with other members of the social network. However, no specific graphical representation of the calendar is required.
US 2007/0214141 A1 discloses a system and method for generating a social timeline. A plurality of data items associated with at least one relationship between users associated with a social network is received. Each data item is associated with a specific time-tag representing an event in the past. The data items are ordered according to the at least one relationship and a social timeline is generated according to the ordered data items. This social timeline includes only events in the past of at least two users connected with each other as friends in the social network. The graphical representation of the events of the users is performed in a uniform standard manner.